


Flash Through the Kodachrome

by orphan_account



Series: The Life I Made For You/ Semi-Connected Introspections [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, But it's more Villain!Wanda, Civil War Team Iron Man, Gen, Infinity War, Not Wanda Friendly, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Tag is there as a caution, not team Cap friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 08:22:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12527096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: You've finished teething and there's the world: crack it open if you can.(Or, Wanda comes into herself, at the insistence of Death.)





	Flash Through the Kodachrome

**Author's Note:**

> Because if MCU Wanda were done properly, she'd be 1000x more interesting.
> 
> Summary quote belongs to Dorothy Dunnett.

Vision falls light to the ground. He goes down slowly, though. The gravity that exists where they are is so much thinner in comparison to earth’s. Whatever the case, there is plenty time to watch him drop- and Wanda remains frozen in her place to see it all.

Vision was their last stronghold against Thanos. He was the only thing standing between Thanos and the mind stone that was giving him life. Everyone else is spread around- most have already fallen and those that haven’t are caught in their own miniature battles, too overpowered to provide backup. There’s only her, but without an order she is too petrified to act.

That has always been her downfall. With nobody to turn to she shrinks further in. She’s never been the one to jump. That had always been Pietro. It had been her brother to volunteer first, after all.

Zemo had not been wrong about Sokovia. It was a failed state long before Ultron leveled it, and long after their parents lay dead in the rubble. Their small country was a war zone, being constantly trampled on by foreign forces. Even when the name on the weapons stopped being Stark, she would lay awake at night and pray that the noise by her window was the whistling of the wind and not the whirl of a missile.

In the poverty and strife of Sokovia, her and Pietro struggled. They had to scavenge and steal to get by. They slept in the abandoned homes of citizens that had the forethought to flee or died somewhere else because they didn’t. Their bodies were thin and their nights were cold, but they had their anger to keep them warm.

Pietro ate what the world gave him like fuel, and turned his anger out like fire. His hatred was not single minded. His fury touched everything but her. In his mind, the world at whole was responsible for it’s own state- and that was a crime demanding retribution. Her own anger was thinly veiled grief, directed out at the world to never stagnate. It was more controlled than Pietro’s. She directed her contempt at whatever would have it in an attempt at finding purpose.

As they grew, so did the outcry of their countrymen. They attended every protest in fervor, until one day an opportunity came to them, in the form of Dr. List.

He approached them out of the shadows, and promised that if they could pass his test, then he would make more out of them then they could ever dream to be. Pietro took him at his word, simply because there was nothing else to do, and Wanda followed. Of all those who volunteered for him (only some familiar faces, but all compatriots of the same cause), her and Pietro were the only two to survive- and what’s more? They thrived.

With every new experiment their powers grew. Pietro got faster and faster, until he could live an entire life out in a second. She got stronger, too. Show her a person, and she’d show you their mind. The scientists monitored them constantly, and they followed every exercise given to them, because they knew the rewards- But the longer they stayed, the more it seemed that they would never leave. Pietro grew restless under their thumb, and because Wanda had always drawn all her energy from him, she reacted in kind. When the Avengers finally came, they were both a saving grace and the devil come to die.

With the Avengers came the actualization of their goal. Tony Stark, in the flesh. The weaponeer who had inadvertently killed their parents, and the glowing face that stood for all they detested about the western world. With her and Pietro freed he was ripe for the taking.

She saw so much when she entered his mind. In it, he contained so much pain, so similar to her own, but handled so differently. She’d built her life around him, only to lift the curtain and be met with the lie that her vision of him was. The other’s had been so much easier, so much less complex in their fears. With Stark, she was forced to see a man where a monster once was. Turning a blind eye was the only option that allowed her to continue living as she was. She did not tell Pietro what she saw, but it hardly matters now. Pietro died anyways.

Ultron was just a seed in Stark’s mind, and she flowered and fed it until it bloomed. The final creation gave them all the power they had hoped for. He reaped so much terror that they had enough fear to rule the world and reshape it in their image. In hindsite, it was too perfect to be real. Under Ultron, there would be no world left to rule. He would kill both of them and call it mercy, because he did not know the difference. They fought beside the Avengers because there was nowhere left to run, and she joined their ranks for the same reason.

When Pietro died, every ambition in her went down with him. He had been so impulsive, saving Clint. She would never have made the same decision. Instead, she hid during the battle and licked her wounds until somebody else told her what to do. With Pietro gone, she found herself gravitating back towards the Avengers, merely because they offered a strong hand, and nobody else would have her.

Joining them, she was uprooted from one dysfunctional ground to another. They were all trying very hard to force the flow of something that would not work. She shared a kinship with them in that they all operated in an odd bubble of self-delusion. There was righteousness and hypocrisy in all of them. They were very good at pretending that the ends justified the means- every lie told, every dollar spent, every act of coercion, every casualty of war. If the world was safe, they had done their part. But she knew better, and so had Stark. There are those that win and there are those that learn, and while it is better to be both, it is certainly _best_ to grow.

That had been the problem when the Accords were introduced. Stark had been coming and going as he pleased. He could exist outside of the Avengers, whereas the others couldn’t. The strain was noticeable. It showed in how Clint spent more time with them than his family. It showed in the tight regime Natasha trained them on. It showed in every secret mission fostered by Steve. Their circle was tight and closing ever further with every new face that couldn’t relate to them. They had never tried to live differently, and an idea that would force them to was not one they would honor.

At the time, she could’ve agreed with Stark. All her anger towards him could not close her eyes to the truth.The news footage from Lagos played constantly, and while she hadn’t meant to, there was a still a debt owed for all the lives lost to her anyways. The consolations of Steve and Vision meant little to her. Vision has yet to experience loss, and Steve doesn’t remember the dead;he chases after their ghosts in desperation. She understood the need for oversight as well as she understood Ultron and Stark. Then Stark set Vision as her keeper and the tables turned away from his favor once more.

Vision lying dead in front of her now is the last reminder of the real love lost between them. When Steve had Clint come for her she rose to the call because what else was she to do? She sent Vision through the floor because she was in control of _nothing_ , not her fear and not anybody else’s, but Steve had taken the reigns and that was enough for action. And Vision had still fought for her at Leipzig. Memories of him close to her in the kitchen, of her reading stories with him at night, of him being close but never close _enough_ stuck to her.

A woman in black with antlers like a deer crouches by his body, and with her tattered clothes catching on the debris, Wanda finds the nerve to move.

The figure looks up at her approaching and she reaches for her powers but sees nothing but darkness in her mind.

“Look,” she hisses, “all you desire but you will find nothing.”

For once, Wanda stands her ground.

“Leave him. He is already gone!”

Her voice cracks saying it, but she knows it is the truth. She cannot turn back time and she cannot raise the dead, but with nobody left to watch she can admit the truth.

The woman smiles dark and speaks with open teeth, “That’s why I’ve come,” and Wanda sees with glaring clarity. This is not one of Thanos lackeys on the ground for vindication. This is death and she follows nobody.

Her anger hits with such full force that she moves without thinking. She launches herself forward but her attack is blocked easily. She is tossed across the ground, but the red still flares around her.

“You did this! You ruined my life! My parents, Pietro, Vision!”

She says the dead’s names over and over again like a mantra until the god silences her with magic. Something volatile in her had ignited with the face of all her suffering. So many years spent on useless blame, when it was all just a deliberate scheme cooked up by a god masquerading as fate.

“You think I have the time to waste on one person? I only collect your waste. I do not design it.”

Wanda cannot respond but she rages against the energy constraining her voice. Who is responsible if not this being? Who is to answer for the crime of Vision? Of Pietro? Of her mother and her father? This is so much bigger than Stark could have orchestrated.

Death has her own sorcery, and she read’s Wanda’s mind like a book.The god cradles Vision's head in her hands like a child and speaks towards him.

“You’re foolish to think it’s any one thing. You lead yourselves to me with every choice you make,” finally she locks eyes with Wanda, “You are not my favorite merchant, but the things you can do are extraordinary. What a waste you’ve been.”

Wanda catches anger in her tone and flinches. Every choice she made had been under somebody else and they always had the same outcome. First following Pietro, then Hydra, Ultron, and then Steve. She had spent months in Wakanda listening to the rest of the team lamenting about the greater good, even as their real objective went back into cyrofreeze. And all along this war had been coming, with nobody but Stark to predict it. Her belief in another’s judgement had failed her yet again. It’s time she make a decision for herself.

With a great burst of her own magic, the other’s binding comes off her. The goddess of death smiles back at her, delighted, and she stands.

Wanda makes herself taller and her voice holds steady.

“I have work to do,” She says. The god cannot design death, but Wanda can. The best hands are her own, after all.


End file.
